Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Six: Progression of Time
January 31, 3040
"Alright, it looks like you've got most of this handled," I told David as he finished off the paperwork that I was helping him get familiarized with. "You feel ready to take over for me yet?"
"Not at all," David shook his head with a wry smile on his face. "There's still so much that I don't know, and I'm worried I'll screw it up."
"You will," I replied. "Screw it up I mean. But the thing about it is that when leaders screw up we have to be the first to admit fault and try to fix them," I sighed. "Most politicians and public figures aren't going to admit that just by being honest they could avoid many of the scandals and other issues that arise at times," I looked David in the eyes. "People like it when their leaders are willing to admit when they are at fault and are willing to look for help to address and fix the situation."
"At least you'll still be around to advise for a while," David said as he filed the paperwork he had just finished. "And Elsa is good for bouncing ideas off of too."
"That is one area where you're probably ahead of me," I admitted with a shrug. "I love Natasha, but she doesn't want anything to do with how things are run from the top."
"You still planning on retiring at the end of this year?" David asked me. "'Cause I'm not sure that I'm ready to take over for you."
"You'll do fine," I told him with a smile. "You've learned everything that I've been teaching you and got to learn quite a bit from Hanse while you were on his bodyguard detail."
"It never feels like it's enough though," David sighed. "My decisions will affect billions of people, and some of them could die if I make the wrong decision."
"It's good that we're getting to work on this now," I told my son. "Yes, you will be ultimately responsible for the overall well-being of the people in the Terran March. But at the end of the day, most of the people responsible for the day-to-day choices that can and will get people killed will be on the more local level, it'll be the mayor or sheriff who decided not to dedicate the funding they receive to the right areas and people ended up paying the price. You are in no way able or even capable of fixing every single problem that might kill someone," I shrugged. "And no one expects you to even try to accomplish that"
"Why not?" David asked me with a raised eyebrow. "Why don't they want me to try and fix all of those potential problems?"
"Because then you will have become a tyrant," I said simply. "By interfering in every little thing and dictating exactly how you want people to live you start down the very slippery slope of liberty and individual choice," I shrugged. "It is one thing to ask people to die for a cause or people they believe in. But it is another thing altogether to ask someone to give up their individual liberty for you."
"Why the focus on individual choice and liberty though?" David asked me. "Wouldn't people prefer comfort and not having a choice?"
"Of course, people prefer that," I replied. "But the path that your thought process is taking you ends in another state like the Capellan Confederation or the Draconis Combine. And while there have been periods when those nations had civil liberties and where their civilians had more rights they were far and few in between. They were always punctuated by the times when they had very little opportunity to do anything about their place in life. Is that what you would wish for the people that we have liberated from both of those nations? The people that have only just begun to realize that there is more to life than being a servitor or a slave to the Dragon?"
"No," David shook his head. "I would not force anyone to live the way that they were in the Combine or the Capellan Confederation."
"And that," I said. "Is precisely my point. None of those nations started with tyrants and dictators, and they each thought that their way was best. In the beginning, the Capellan Confederation and the Combine could have been called places where you could find learning and wisdom. But their descendants didn't believe the same things, and it led to the state that we found them in a few decades ago."
"I'm gonna have to think about this a bit more," David said. "Thanks for the help dad, I'll finish off the rest of the paperwork for the day."
February 15, 3040
"Dr. Rogers," I stood up and hugged the scientist and engineer. "How is everything going at the SLC up in the mountains?"
"I'd appreciate it if we got to keep more of our graduates," she glared at me and then sighed. "But I also like that most of them end up going back to their homeworlds to hopefully improve things for the better."
"Yeah, the Terran and Periphery Marches need all of the help they can get on that front," I replied. "The worlds of the old Terran Hegemony are mostly in ruins, and it'll take decades of work to get them back to the level that they were at before."
"I'm sure that's not all that you wanted to talk to me about though," Rogers said as she looked into my eyes. "So, what is it that you have planned?"
"We're going to be turning most of the Warship fleet over to the AFFS in a couple of years," I said bluntly. "We're going to be keeping the Stefan Amaris, the Narukami, and the Manassas. I want to know how much longer it'll be before the battleship and destroyer are ready to be crewed and tested in the void again."
"Three years before the Stefan AmarisClass is spaceworthy again and the refits that you requested are done," she sighed. "And two before the Narukami can do anything more than just float out in space."
"So five years before the two Warships are capable of doing anything that I would need the for?"
"That sounds about right," Rogers replied. "Why? Is there something important that you need them for?"
"Let's just say that I've got something planned, and you might want to be on board when we attempt it," there was a grin on my face.
"They managed to get it working?!" Rogers asked excitedly. "I thought that it would be another five to ten years before they managed to replicate the experimental drive on the Manassas."
"They've had three confirmed working test runs," I replied. "We're going to be refitting the Warships with it and repairing the unit on the Manassas. We're going to be having NAIS triple-check everything, but any new jumpships rolling off of the yards will have a range of forty light-years instead of the usual thirty."
"That could cut travel time down by quite a bit!" Rogers began to get excited once more. "Are there any plans for a long-term test?"
"They're going to be performing a test run from Tharkad to New Avalon and then over to Taurus this year," I confirmed. "That'll be the final test to make sure that everything runs smoothly."
"It's a brave new world out there," Rogers grinned. "With the chance for discovering new or lost worlds around every corner."
"Indeed," I lifted up my coffee in a salute to her remark. "The face of the galaxy is ever-changing